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Chapter Five
“Edgar,”I whispered through that freaky, mental telepathy thingy I shared with my frumpy Familiar.“Edgar, you there? You okay? You pissed and ignoring me? You…”
“Already tired of being trapped in this hole in the ground with you trying and failing to whisper into my brain?”Edgar grumbled. “That would be a yes to all of the above.”
“Well, I never.”
“Yes, you did and do,”he snapped.“All the time. Now, what the hell do you want? What could I possibly do that theone and only famous Witch, Ella Brown, the Keeper of Christmas Star, blah, blah, bloody blah couldn’t do? Why aren’t you makin’ with the Magic and getting’ the hell outta Dodge?”
“Well… I, umm… It’s just that… Oh crap, I was worried okay? I was afraid you were hurt, and I was worried. There! I said it. Are you happy now? You caught me at a moment of weakness, and I was forced to admit that I care whether you live or die. Look at that. Look what you did. You ruined the mystique of our relationship. Now, I’ll have to start all over and be twice as mean and three times as…”
“Thank you,”Edgar chuckled. “Thank you for saying it first. I was worried about you, too. Now, answer my question. Why haven’t you already Magicked us out of here? And while you’re at it, who did you piss off to land our happy heineys in this hole in the ground? Please tell me it’s someone we can give a box of cookies and say we’re sorry and not have any permanent damage to our person. Please tell me it’s not someone big, bad, and ugly who wants his pound of flesh, because, as you well know, I don’t really have an extra pound to give…”
“Except from that rather round rather fluffy tummy.”
“I’m ignoring you,”he singsonged, before clearing his throat and going right back to his rant.“Although, I’m pretty sure our not-so pleasant and definitely not hospitable host is somebody with considerable power since he highjacked the enchantment of the Doc’s Magical Healing Machine just to pull us down here. How many times have I told you to keep your mouth shut? Just smile and nod. It’s not that hard. People do it all the ti…”
“When have you ever, in all your many years, ever not put your unwanted and definitely unwelcome two-cents worth into any and every conversation within and sometimes farther than your earshot? Usually, it’s more than two cents, almost a dollar worth of your own special kind of bullshit and entails a dissertation that pisses off everybody in a hundred-mile radius. You never shut up…”
And just like that, our tender moment, the only one we’d ever had was over. I had to admit, I was glad it came and went like the flicker of a flea’s fart. Anymore mushy shit and I might have had to throw up.
In the meantime, and to hide my growing fear about our situation, I kept right on bitching…
“… You go on and on and on and then on some more about nothing and everything all at once and you have the utter nerve to…”
A flash of light, a clap of thunder, a bolt of lightning and the sound of falling rock had me swallowing my words and almost my tongue. Something was coming,A whole lot of somethings- if the scrambling and scratching of claws on stone and clicking and clacking of what could only be millions of pinchers opening and closing in quick succession was any indication.
“Make with the Magic! Make with the Magic!”
For the first time in forever, Edgar sounded completely freaked out of his little mind. I mean,really scared. His voice was high and reedy. He was talking so fast his words all ran together. And, most importantly he wasn’t breathing, just talking. Saying the same thing over and over and over.
“Make with the Magic! Make with the Magic! Make with the Magic!”
“EDGAR!” I screamed, sure I was about to lose my mind and not wanting Dr. Bombay to have to write – Elf-Screeching Induced Insanity on my chart at the Witless Witches Home.
Taking a deep breath, the gasp sounding way louder than it actually was in the sudden and wonderful silence of my brain, I slowly whispered,“Don’t you think if I could be making with the Magic that I would’ve already done so? Please, give me a little credit. Had I been able to zap us anywhere but here, some place where you were not screeching at the very top of your lungs into my poor brain I would have most assuredly done so, Captain Buttface. Whoever did this to us has turned off my Magic. It’s gone. I’ve got zip, zilch, nada.”
I knew he heard me. Could feel the wheels of his demented little mind working overtime to dream up some witty comeback, or threat, or insult that he thought would make me just as mad as he was. Little did he know, that was my plan all along.
I hated to admit it, even stopped for a hot minute and thought about telling him that it had all been a ruse to get him to stop freakin’ out and not be so scared, but I didn’t. Truth was - the thing I never wanted to admit again for as long as I lived was - I really did love Edgar. Like an annoying little brother that isway way waaaayolder than me, who pisses me off every time he opens his mouth and I’m stuck with forever and ever, amen. Yep, that kinda love. But none the less, still love and that’s what counted.
Trying to come up with a way to escape or at the very least get some kind of light in the hole we were stuck in so I could see what was going on, a sudden thought popped into my head and had my lips moving before I could stop them. “Dr. Bombay? Hey, Doc, you here? Doc, you okay?”
But there was no answer. And while that was bad enough because I didn’t know if the good doctor had been sucked into wherever we were and was lying unconscious and hurt or was back at my house wondering what the hell had happened, it was the way the skittering and scampering and clipping and clapping of whatever was coming for us got louder and faster.
The little bastards – whatever they were – were following the sound of my voice. But wait… Didn’t they know where we were? Weren’t they part of the devious plan of whoever or whatever had sucked my frumptastic Familiar and me into some Goddess-forsaken hole in the ground?
Things weren’t adding up and that just pissed me off. So much so, that I disregarded my poor broken leg and my lack of crutches and the fact that I had no idea who or what I was dealing with and took matters into my own hands. Planting my palms on the hard, rough ground on either side of my perfectly round behind, I pushed my back against the cold stone wall behind me and sucked in all the air my wonderful Witchy lungs could hold.
Pushing up as hard and fast as I could at the same time that I slid my good leg under me, I was panting and sweating and generally feeling like what I imagined running a mile would feel like as I cursed a blue streak of unintelligible and completely made-up words.
“Fart knocker, hob knocker, son of duck ball lickin’ lizard-skinned frog’s booty, freckled focaccia flyspeckled Frankenstein frankfurter fickle fart, banana shenanegans shnookerdookies…”
(Yes, I have realized that I use the term ‘fart’ way too often for a Witch of my stature. However, I kinda like it. So, while I’m tryin’ to cutback, I’ll never completely stop.)
Upright, the wall and my shaky good leg the only things keeping me that way, I growled my final finale, pièce de resistance, the curse I’d heard my Great-Great-Great Grandaddy holler the day he dropped Granny Brown’s thousand-year-old iron cauldron on his toe. The one and only, “Son of a motherless goat!”
No sooner had I uttered those five fated words than bright white light filled the horrible, mold and moss covered, damp and dank, creepy and crawly, dastardly dungeon Edgar and I had been flung into. Point five seconds after that a legion of spiders – yes, I said spiders and yes, I said legion appeared in the jagged, archway across the cavern.
